Description
Thus begins Franco Moretti's study of the bourgeois in modern European literature-a major new analysis of the once-dominant culture and its literary decline and fall. Moretti's gallery of individual portraits is entwined with the analysis of specific keywords-"useful" and "earnest," "efficiency," "influence," "comfort," "roba"-and of the formal mutations of the medium of prose. From the "working master" of the opening chapter, through the seriousness of nineteenth-century novels, the conservative hegemony of Victorian Britain, the "national malformations" of the Southern and Eastern periphery, and the radical self-critique of Ibsen's twelve-play cycle, the book charts the vicissitudes of bourgeois culture, exploring the causes for its historical weakness, and for its current irrelevance.
Who - and what - are the Bourgeois?
About the Author
Franco Moretti is the author of many books, including Graphs, Maps, Trees; The Bourgeois; and Distant Reading, winner of the 2013 National Book Critics Circle Award for Criticism. His work has been translated into more than twenty languages. He is Professor Emeritus at Stanford, where he founded the Center for the Study of the Novel and the Literary Lab.
Reviews
The great iconoclast of literary criticism. -- John Sutherland * Guardian *
It's a rare literary critic who attracts so much public attention, and there's a good reason: few are as hellbent on rethinking the way we talk about literature. * Times Literary Supplement *
Moretti, a mythopoeic figure, generates around himself a dense network of folklore and apocrypha. * n+1 *
Moretti is already famous in bookish circles for his data-centric approach to novels, which he graphs, maps, and charts ... if his new methods catch on, they could change the way we look at literary history. * Wired *
Distant reading might prove to be a powerful tool for studying literature. * New York Times *
Book Information
ISBN 9781781680858
Author Franco Moretti
Format Hardback
Page Count 228
Imprint Verso Books
Publisher Verso Books
Weight(grams) 408g
Dimensions(mm) 216mm * 140mm * 3mm